Ti West’s formal exercise in the babysitter-in-distress genre is, alas, little more than that, but it’s fascinatingly watchable in a kind of academic way. All the elements are in place: an oblivious college student (played by Levi’s model Jocelin Donahue), a one-time babysitting gig, a creaky mansion in the middle of nowhere, the house’s creepy residents (Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov – what a cast! — performing mannered line readings), and an unprecedented lunar eclipse – well, the kind that Satanists of all stripes apparently find irresistible, anyway.

Where the Title Comes From.

"Attempting to burrow and disappear into the admiration of certain works of art, I tried to make such deep and pure identification that my integrity as a human self would become optional, a vestige of my relationship to the art. I wanted to submit and submerge, even to die a little. I developed a preference, among others, for art that required endurance, that mimicked a galactic endlessness and wore out the nonbelievers. By ignoring my hunger or my need to use the bathroom during a three-hour movie by Kubrick or Tarkovsky, I'd voted against my body, with its undeniable pangs and griefs, in favor of a self composed of eyeballs and brain, floating in the void of pure art." ---- Jonathan Lethem, "The Beards"